Finally something had changed.
After he had his little breakdown, or at least he himself referred to it as a small one, he was quite a bit more pragmatic, he had really begun to look at everything as is, not caring about feelings, emotions, he himself had them behind lock and key now after all.
Well, no, he didn't exactly lock them up, or really do anything with them, it was more so that they seemed to no longer affect him, it was more so that even the faint intention of the beasts slithering in the void around him, those that he managed to somehow decipher despite the fact that many of them were still stronger or as strong as him, now had a greater emotional burden on his mind than his own emotions.
He simply didn't care for his own emotions, and even less the emotions of others, it was more so that he cared about the intentions behind the beasts including their emotions sometimes so he could understand and gain knowledge, which was only further strengthened by the fact that he had no real idea of what was going on right now, it was strengthened so far that he was in a similar state to back when he had tried to cut his own bodily parts of just to gain more insight into ehetrian biology, gain first-hand experience at surgical actions and perhaps even turn himself into an artifact.
Knowledge.
To the current Cades nothing, truly nothing, except for perhaps his own survival, and even that was quite doubtful and more of a primal instinct to strive for, was more important than that very word, no, that very act, the act of learning, the act of amassing knowledge, especially about this accursed place in which he had now been stuck for so long that he'd been able to learn over a dozen new techniques at Unulria.. or was it Anria...
Cades had been quite shocked when he realized that he no longer really remembered, after all, this had only been a few months ago and he had not changed so much, or at least that's what he thought at first, but he soon realized just how wrong he was, and he was very, very much wrong, as wrong as someone saying that the sky was dark brown during the middle of the day on ehetria.
He had truly changed to an unrecognizable degree, he had gained more power than he ever would've had he stayed on ehetria, though he would've still preferred that, but by not doing that, although not out of his own choice, he had surpassed even the heroes of many a legend in just a few months.
Perhaps that was also one of the many reasons for the fact that his mind was starting to fall apart, the sheer fact of the discrepancy between his current power, magical and physical, and the power and knowledge he had wielded back on ehetria, it was so much more that his body could perhaps not catch up, so much so that his knowledge, the thing he had been especially obsessed with his whole live had forsaken him and was now not enough, or perhaps the knowledge he had been able to acquire was simply not enough on ehetria itself.
Indeed, ehetria had never been that impressive of a world, he had heard of worlds where towering giants lived, worlds full of towering golems with sentience, worlds populated with tiny metal drones capable of reproduction, something he had always wanted to visit due to the fact that those could indeed be considered artifact, but didn't really wield magic as far as he knew, something that was probably false and just a rumour now that he thought about it again, but it had always been his truth.
And even just the ranking system was also full of lies now that he truly began to think.
It was ridiculous actually.
Back on ehetria there was a simply system, the apex was the apex and the sequences between the first to the ninth stage were the individual steps, but that was wrong, an apex, Cades now knew that, was pathetic in the grand scheme of things.
The only thing that an apex could really do was being flashy, such as he himself had been while fighting against the great demon of the skies and causing the light-show that had lit up the entirety of the sky for around a mile, at least when it came to visibility.
But in truth it had just been the case of perfect conditions.
On that night it had been quite foggy, another reason for Cades to use it because the monster couldn't really differentiate between it's own prey and the one he had brought, and added on top of that it was simply a beautiful night that made him want to be proactive.
That fog, however, was the thing that had made the flames, or at least the light, spread that far, it had simply propelled the light itself to illuminate the sky that was dressed within it's nightly dress and ornated by the countless glowing dots on it's great cloak that followed it's every step.
Truthfully he had been lucky that the flames he had used back then had even been able to harm the demon who had been of the lord-rank, something that he now realized had only really been the case because that demon had been especially weak to fire and had been blinded by the radiant light that came from the fact that he had been infusing too much mana into his flames, leading to them glowing brighter and brighter, despite the opposite actually being better because that would've meant that it was more concentrated in this case.
Cades had simply lied to himself with his useless pride from back then, but what use did pride have without someone to see him, someone to listen to him, someone to brag to?
It was nothing, it did not feed, it did not nurture, it simply devoured and hindered his own development.
He had been lying to himself.